Armadale.
"Where is she?" he asked, looking angrily at his wife's empty
chair. The doctor pointed to the place. She had no choice but
to come forward. She came slowly and stood before him.
"You promised to go when I told you," he said. "Go now."
Mr. Neal tried hard to control his hand as it kept his place
between the leaves of the manuscripts but it trembled in spite
of him. A suspicion which had been slowly forcing itself on
his mind, while he was reading, became a certainty when he heard
those words. From one revelation to another the letter had gone
on, until it had now reached the brink of a last disclosure to
come. At that brink the dying man had predetermined to silence
the reader's voice, before he had permitted his wife to hear the
narrative read. There was the secret which the son was to know
in after years, and which the mother was never to approach. From
that resolution, his wife's tenderest pleadings had never moved
him an inch--and now, from his own lips, his wife knew it.
She made him no answer. She stood there and looked at him; looked
her last entreaty--perhaps her last farewell. His eyes gave her
back no answering glance: they wandered from her mercilessly to
the sleeping boy.
Pages:
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88